“Modern words are round, ancient words are square”: How to translate (and understand) ancient Indian philosophy?
How can we adequately translate texts composed more than two millennia ago, in a language (Sanskrit) very different from our own, by people whose ideas and lives were so radically alien from ours?
This talk explores this question and some of its implications, exploring the Upaniṣads, some among the most revered sacred texts of Hinduism. Specifically, I will focus on a famous dialogue, in which the sage Yājñavalkya teaches his wife Maitreyī how to attain immortality.
We will zoom in on some crucial passages. My argument is that comparing translations among themselves and with the Sanskrit original provides a powerful tool for generating questions. Close scrutiny of these questions will lead us to refine our understanding of the original, of its philosophical ideas, and of how we—twentieth-first-century people—can relate to ancient thoughts.